OFF Topics :: PC-laptop or Powerbook

[Squeak Smalltalk]

Hi,

I will change job soon and I have to decide which type of laptop I want.
I have always had pc-laptops.
But I see that a lot of ruby programers use powerbooks.

If you use a powerbook give me some advice ?

Best Regards
W.

 

[Brian Mitchell]

Hi,

I will change job soon and I have to decide which type of laptop I want.
I have always had pc-laptops.
But I see that a lot of ruby programers use powerbooks.

If you use a powerbook give me some advice ?

Best Regards
W.

Powerbooks are excellent tools. I would recommend one, however, PC
laptops have some very nice options with the low-power models. I
bought my PB because I wanted the environment. The hardware isn't very
fast. Full USB power is lacking. It does have some nice things like a
backlit keyboard and bluetooth. etc... so they make up for some of the
misfeatures. Take think into consideration when you make your
purchase.

The main pro is the software. Go check out a Mac at a retailer near
you (or find a friend with one) and play around for a while (really --
install stuff, configure it, check out the dev tools). See if you like
it. If not get a PC-laptop that is compatible with Linux and get the
next best option.

Brian.

 

[Bob Aman]

Hi,

I will change job soon and I have to decide which type of laptop I want.
I have always had pc-laptops.
But I see that a lot of ruby programers use powerbooks.

If you use a powerbook give me some advice ?

Best Regards
W.

I adore my 12" Powerbook, but if I had it to do over again, I would
probably look for a photobag that fit the 15" Powerbook instead of
looking for a Powerbook that fit the 13" sleeve in my photobag. The
lack of a PCMCIA slot on the 12" is somewhat disappointing as well as
the lack of the back-lit keyboard. Neither are must-have features,
but I do know that when the Intel Powerbooks show up, I'll be opting
for a 15" instead.

Windows laptops aren't even in the running. I have too many dead
laptops in my house from too many different manufacturers. The only
laptop manufacturer whose servicing policies I can deal with is Apple.
I take my laptop to the local authorized mac repair guy and two days
later I get it back, no charge, problem fixed. They even replaced my
lcd screen because it had a single dead pixel when I got it. Extended
warranties aren't exactly cheap, but they're necessary. As anyone who
has owned any non-hardened laptop can tell you, laptops require
service/replacement far more often than their desktop counterparts.=20
And Apple just tends to do a better job at this because of their
network of excellent repair guys. Most others like Toshiba, Compaq,
Acer, whatever, require you to mail the laptop to them for repairs.=20
This can take weeks. Weeks where you're not getting any work done on
the thing. When you put that kind of cost up against the cost of the
warranty, the warranty starts looking downright cheap in comparison.

If you *must* get a Windows laptop, IBM is the only manufacturer I'd
even consider looking at. The IBM laptop I have is the only laptop
I've ever owned that simply has never required any service at all.=20
And judging by the number of absolutely ancient IBM laptops that one
sees floating around, mine is not the exception to the rule.

And finally, are you sure you want a laptop? My brother got a laptop
before going off to college, and I believe he's moved it from its desk
maybe twice. Desktops are always cheaper, and much faster. They're
just not as fashionable.

But yes, Powerbooks in general are highly recommended. It's hard to
describe beyond, "They just feel right." And they certainly play
nicely with Ruby.

 

[Wilson Bilkovich]

Powerbooks are great, but it is true that the hardware currently isn't
up to the level of the latest Intel-based notebooks.
For example, even though my Thinkpad is something like 2 years old, I
have 1.5GB of memory, WiFi, bluetooth, powered USB connectors,
nationwide wireless data, etc, etc.. in a package that weighs 3.5lbs
including the bag and shoulder strap.
Just shy of 4.0lbs if I use the 7-hour battery instead of the slim one.

IBM's "value-added" software also greatly improves the Windows
experience; for example, it makes the process of switching network
settings scriptable, so you don't have to visit a control panel to go
from coffee shop to secure WiFi at the office.

This year's version of that gives you more CPU power, faster video,
etc, for the same weight and lower power utilization.

I'm looking forward to future multi-core Powerbooks using Intel chips,
sometime in 2006. For the moment, though, I just can't get excited
about the hardware.

--Wilson.

 

[Alan Gutierrez]

I adore my 12" Powerbook, but if I had it to do over again, I would
probably look for a photobag that fit the 15" Powerbook instead of
looking for a Powerbook that fit the 13" sleeve in my photobag.

Half the fun of a powerbook is chosing a sweet bag to go with
it...

http://www.chromebags.com/citizen.php - Chome (Mine!)
http://www.crumplerbags.com/cartIndex.php?catId=7 - Crumpler
http://www.timbuk2.com/ - Timbuk3

If you *must* get a Windows laptop, IBM is the only manufacturer I'd
even consider looking at. The IBM laptop I have is the only laptop
I've ever owned that simply has never required any service at all.

Indeed. IBM is a good option for PC laptops. I don't like choice
in commoditites, and would simply get a Thinkpad.

Few PC laptop manf. understand that laptops sit on furniture.
A good laptop has soft, fuzzy feet. If it doesn't, don't trust
them to get the insides right.

And finally, are you sure you want a laptop? My brother got a laptop
before going off to college, and I believe he's moved it from its desk
maybe twice. Desktops are always cheaper, and much faster. They're
just not as fashionable.

I'm sure the OP wants a laptop, but, sort of in the same vein..

If you are going to get a low end Dell or Gateway, just get a
desktop. A 5kg laptop is bad your back. The low end laptops are
fitted with desktop processors, thristy processors. The extra
battery you'll carry will mean your rig is going to weigh 10kg
or something crazy.

If the core unit is not light, like 2.5kg (guessing at the
metric, btw) you won't want to move your laptop, it will sit on
your desk, so don't pile on features in to a cheap PC laptop.

But yes, Powerbooks in general are highly recommended. It's hard to
describe beyond, "They just feel right." And they certainly play
nicely with Ruby.

The reality is that on OS X, I have more applications available
to me. In Windows, I was constantly struggling to get some open
source jewel to build correctly.

It's like having two computers in one.

I can run Ruby, Apache, vi, mutt, slrn, Perl, and shell
programs. Everything from open source land now builds on it with
a ./configure && make or similiar.

Then I have iTunes, iPhoto, an excellent DVD player,
NetNewsWire, OmniGraffle, Safari and Firefox.

The DVD player, it makes me think of the many hours spent
reinstalling the DVD player on my old PC laptop. It would forget
that it was licensed in the middle of film, just, suddenly, it
would go, hey, did you license me? You really should go visit my
web site and register me. I'll wait.

If you choose to go OS X, you can stop shopping and choose your
Powerbook right now. It will have great apps, long battery life,
it will be light, it will be well manufactured. You don't have
to shop for what should be given.

If you buy a Powerbook, you are literally buying time.

Cheers.

 

[Phil Tomson]

Hi,

I will change job soon and I have to decide which type of laptop I want.
I have always had pc-laptops.
But I see that a lot of ruby programers use powerbooks.

If you use a powerbook give me some advice ?

choose the powerbook. Definitely. ;-)

Phil

 

[Charles Plager]

Hi,

I will change job soon and I have to decide which type of laptop I want.
I have always had pc-laptops.
But I see that a lot of ruby programers use powerbooks.

If you use a powerbook give me some advice ?

Best Regards
W.

A couple of comments:

- Mac laptops are generally more expensive than their Windows
counterparts for the equivalent computer.

- If you're a posix/unix type of guy, Mac OS X is a GUI on top of unix.
With windows, if you want a posix environment, cygwin and its X
server isn't hard to set up and works well for most things (and comes
with ruby, vim, emacs... all the same stuff you get with OS X).

- In my opinion, mac laptops don't come in high enough resolution (their
17" is 1440 x 900, their 15" is 1280 x 854, whereas you can get a Dell
with a 15.4" 1920 x 1200 screen). If you don't like small fonts, this
almost certainly doesn't matter to you.

- You *could* buy a Windows machine and make it dual-boot with linux. I
don't recommend this, but it's an option.

- Where I work, Apple, Dell, and IBM laptops all seem to have equivalent
reliability.

So, I'd go to a store where I can play with Windows laptops and Mac
laptops and see which interface you want. Most common software packages
can be found for both platforms.

Good luck,
Charles

p.s. In any case, I'd consider the extended warranty. If something goes
wrong with a desktop, you replace the component yourself. If something
goes wrong with a laptop, you're hosed.

 

[Kenny Parnell]

I love my 15" PowerBook. I would highly suggest that over a PC
Laptop. I used PC all of my life first windows, and then linux for
the past 6 years. I have had my PowerBook for about 10 months now and
I would never go back.

Also, like Bob said, Apple's service is great. My PowerBook was
stepped on and Apple fixed it free in 3 days. The covered shipping to
and from Texas.

I have good speed. I also like the fact that I can run Mac and Unix
software simultaneously.

Hope that helps,
-Kenny

 

[Scott Ellsworth]

If you use a powerbook give me some advice ?

I do use one, and am very happy with it. I am not doing that much Ruby
at the moment, but it works well when I do.

I especially love the Unix layer being there, but not being somethnig I
have to use all the time. I get a nice GUI when I want one, and a full
bash/vim/apache command line for the tasks it is suited for.

Sales pitch aside: really, take the advice of some other posters and go
experiment with one at an Apple store, then with appropriate PC laptops.
There are tradeoffs, and it is good to know what they are.

Also, be aware that new Intel-based laptops are going to show up from
Apple sometime soon. I am betting on next May or so, but we have only
been promised that 'Intel machines will ship before WWDC 2006, with a
full transition before the end of 2007'. Still, laptops are a likely
first machine, as Intel mobile chips deliver amazing battery life.

Scott

 

[James Britt]

 

[Mike Stok]

I adore my 12" Powerbook, but if I had it to do over again, I would
probably look for a photobag that fit the 15" Powerbook instead of
looking for a Powerbook that fit the 13" sleeve in my photobag. The
lack of a PCMCIA slot on the 12" is somewhat disappointing as well as
the lack of the back-lit keyboard. Neither are must-have features,
but I do know that when the Intel Powerbooks show up, I'll be opting
for a 15" instead.

... the 17" isn't that much bigger than the 15". Just don't ask my
wife how I got from "a mini would be nice" to the powerbook. 2 weeks
in and it's a blast, still playing with toys rather than programming
- but it's nice to have a fun, quiet, working computer again!

Mike

--

Mike Stok <[email protected]>
http://www.stok.co.uk/~mike/

The "`Stok' disclaimers" apply.

 

[William Morgan]

Excerpts from Squeak Smalltalk's mail of 4 Oct 2005 (CDT):

I will change job soon and I have to decide which type of laptop I
want. I have always had pc-laptops. But I see that a lot of ruby
programers use powerbooks.

My data point: I have a 3-year-old Gateway laptop that's thin and light,
has a 15" screen, and has only had one problem in the past three years
of heavy use and travel (the hard drive was on the verge of failing and
I swapped another one in---trivial). Best computer purchase I ever made.

I ripped off Windows and installed Debian. I have the latest Gnome stuff
on there and it's very very pretty. Total cost: far less than a
Powerbook.

Of course 99% of my usage involves ruby-mode in emacs (text-mode, run in
an xterm), LaTeX, and Firefox, so ymmv.

 

[Damphyr]

I recently bought a Dell Latitude 810. It kicks ass.

The resolution is amazing.

Or run VMware. Or use a Knoppix boot disk with permenant drive space
allocated.

I considered getting a Powerbook, but decided I got more bang for my
buck from Dell.



Depends. My Toshiba Portege was easy to open up and mess with.

But screens are hard to fix or replace, and are likely the biggest
risk.

I've been working exclusively with laptops for the past 6 years and all
of them were windows boxes. I love the Powerbook and if you can get away
from the window world I would say go for it. Much less administration to
worry about, a lot less re-formatting, less viruses, less threats and
more stability.
All of the above are Windows problems and not laptop problems. I've had
to work with all the Dells from C800 to D840. Amazing resolutions but
some flaky memory chips and hard disks meant we had the Dell guy once a
month in the office.
Toshiba (m40-129) is what I'm working with now, and although it's fast
and has a nice screen, the keyboard layout is something sick (windows&
start keys on the right top side, where they are completely useless,
insert and delete on the right of space *before* alt-gr for thumb
breaking maneuvers) and it's Linux incombatible (something I fume about).
I have also worked with Compaq (old history), HP, Sony and my absolute
favorite Thinkpads. I don't care what anyone says, a T42p (and any of
it's successors) is the ultimate laptop. They don't break, they are
lightning fast, have the best keyboard and mousestick and you have all
the peripherals you wish for in 4 lbs total. If you are willing to pay
more than what you're going to pay for a powerbook and want a laptop
that sweeps the board, buy a thinkpad.
Cheers,
V.-

--
http://www.braveworld.net/riva

____________________________________________________________________
http://www.freemail.gr - äùñåÜí õðçñåóßá çëåêôñïíéêïý ôá÷õäñïìåßïõ.
http://www.freemail.gr - free email service for the Greek-speaking.

 

[Mark Volkmann]

- but it's nice to have a fun, quiet, working computer again!

Quiet? I've got a 15" Powerbook and the fan in it has to be the
loudest I've ever heard in a laptop. It's annoying to listen to music
on it while programming when the fan comes on. Other than that I
generally prefer Powerbooks over Windows laptops. There are other
minor annoyances like fuzzy fonts (presumably caused by
anti-aliasing).

 

[Gavin Sinclair]

I've been working exclusively with laptops for the past 6 years and all
of them were windows boxes. I love the Powerbook and if you can get away
from the window world I would say go for it. Much less administration to
worry about, a lot less re-formatting, less viruses, less threats and
more stability.
All of the above are Windows problems and not laptop problems. I've had
to work with all the Dells from C800 to D840. Amazing resolutions but
some flaky memory chips and hard disks meant we had the Dell guy once a
month in the office. [snip rest]

I've had a Dell Inspiron 8000, running Windows, for 5 years now.
Hardly a single problem. No Dell guy from the office, ever. No
viruses, reformatting (except to change from Win2K to WinXP), or
threats. Instability, yes -- a graphics driver conflict that annoyed
me for a while, but nothing compared to my experiences with Linux
graphics problems.

Perhaps I'm just lucky, but I think people should take more
responsibility for their systems and not blame a certain commercial OS
for _everything_!

Don't get me wrong; I'm no one-eyed Windows fan. I dig Linux and drool
over every OSX-based product I see. But I like to see things kept in
perspective.

Cheers,
Gavin

 

[Ryan Leavengood]

Perhaps I'm just lucky, but I think people should take more
responsibility for their systems and not blame a certain commercial OS
for _everything_!

Don't get me wrong; I'm no one-eyed Windows fan. I dig Linux and drool
over every OSX-based product I see. But I like to see things kept in
perspective.

I agree. I was a pretty rabid anti-Microsoft person back in the
Windows 95/98 days. The reason? Those operating systems were very
unstable and crashed a lot and generally caused headaches. But since
Windows 2000 and XP I haven't had too much to complain about. I have
had a Dell Inspiron 5150 at work running Windows XP and the only
problem I've had in about 2 years is the hard drive crashing. In that
case I was able to recover almost everything (using a Gentoo Linux
boot CD) and Dell had a new hard drive shipped within a day.

While I like OS X and a lot of the Apple philosophy, I'm not convinced
the cost/benefit ratio is at an appropriate level.

My next purchase will probably be a Windows laptop that is compatible
with Linux, so I can set up a dual boot system (though I imagine I'd
spend most of my time in Linux.) If I could just buy OS X and install
it I would; but that won't be happening for a while, if ever.

Ryan

 

[Christophe Grandsire]

I agree. I was a pretty rabid anti-Microsoft person back in the
Windows 95/98 days. The reason? Those operating systems were very
unstable and crashed a lot and generally caused headaches. But since
Windows 2000 and XP I haven't had too much to complain about.

To each his own. On my desktop I have *never* had to reinstall Windows
ME (and my computer is 4 years old). It does crash, and it's annoying,
but I've always been able to solve the problems, quickly.

I cannot say that for Windows XP. Whether it is XP Pro that I have to
use at work or computers from friends, it always has problems, and even
when you log in as administrator it seems to think it knows better than
you what you want to do (this behaviour annoys me immensely! *I* am the
user, *I* decide what I do, not the damn OS!).

If anything, XP has made me even more anti-Microsoft than I was before,
but anyway my position has more to do with their shady business
practices and their constant attacks on freedoms than the technical
state of their desktop.

Anyway, since I installed Debian on my computer, I've only ever booted
Windows to upgrade things like Opera, because my partner still uses
Windows and I don't want him to suffer because I don't use it myself.

My next purchase will probably be a Windows laptop that is compatible
with Linux, so I can set up a dual boot system (though I imagine I'd
spend most of my time in Linux.)

Yeah, Linux can be addictive like that .

If I could just buy OS X and install

it I would; but that won't be happening for a while, if ever.

I've never cared for Apple myself. I've used some Apple computers, but I
don't see the big deal . And I don't have the money anyway.

And when this computer finally expires, my next one will be a white box
on which I'll install Debian and nothing else. No MS tax for me, thank
you very much (especially since I have better uses for my money than buy
the high end hardware necessary to run Vista).

Well, enough ranting, back to Ruby .
--
Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.

 

[Nicholas Van Weerdenburg]

I've been working exclusively with laptops for the past 6 years and all
of them were windows boxes. I love the Powerbook and if you can get awa= y
from the window world I would say go for it. Much less administration t= o
worry about, a lot less re-formatting, less viruses, less threats and
more stability.
All of the above are Windows problems and not laptop problems. I've had
to work with all the Dells from C800 to D840. Amazing resolutions but
some flaky memory chips and hard disks meant we had the Dell guy once a
month in the office. [snip rest]

I've had a Dell Inspiron 8000, running Windows, for 5 years now.
Hardly a single problem. No Dell guy from the office, ever. No
viruses, reformatting (except to change from Win2K to WinXP), or
threats. Instability, yes -- a graphics driver conflict that annoyed
me for a while, but nothing compared to my experiences with Linux
graphics problems.

Perhaps I'm just lucky, but I think people should take more
responsibility for their systems and not blame a certain commercial OS
for _everything_!

Don't get me wrong; I'm no one-eyed Windows fan. I dig Linux and drool
over every OSX-based product I see. But I like to see things kept in
perspective.

Cheers,
Gavin

4 dell laptops, used continuously over 8 years. One flaky hard-drive
after 2 years of constant travel and use with a M50.

Currently have a Dell Precision M60, and it's a beautiful machine.

I think one of the issues is annectodal evidence is inaccurate in this
case, and mostly for deployment patterns. People using Dell laptops
often do in a corporate setting, and have many more opportunities for
failure in the installed base. Powerbooks are often in smaller offices
or personal machines.

I had this insight earlier this year when I was bitching how computers
were getting more unreliable. Then I realized I have 6 computers in my
home. So whereas I had an issue with 1 computer every six years, and
though that was great, I might now have 1 issue a year, and think
everything has gone to hell. Purely perception.

Still want a powerbook, of course. I have my Cube for my home
machine, but it's starting to get a bit slow. May try a processor
upgrade- saw a benchmark that put it slightly faster then the mini's
with the upgrade. Of course, that would quash justification for a
powerbook.

Nick